So last year I participated in the Redditgifts.com Secret Santa exchange.
It was my very first of many exchanges on the site. It was not actually all that I hoped and dreamed it would be.

I was soooo crazy excited. I made my match this cake. I sent him that along with a bunch of other stuff. Some comics, some local candy, some star trek toys… I was so pleased that I had done such a good job putting together his gift.

I sent it out and I waited. And I waited. And… I waited.
Two weeks after I knew he received it… I finally got the email! My giftee confirmed receiving my gift! Usually people post photos and post glorious thank you notes. I’d been dreaming of this day! I open the page and staring back at me is just one sentence. Not even really a full sentence. “Got a box of cool stuff.”

*blink* F5… nope, still the same.

Sooo my giftee wasn’t as crazy appreciative as I had hoped. Ah well.
I signed up to rematch someone who’s gifter didn’t send them anything. And she was thrilled when I made her a Jaws pillow. So that was great! Since then, I think I’ve participated in about a dozen exchanges! Overall, my experiences have been wonderful.
I’ve given and received some really great stuff.

THAT SAID… this year my match was really cool! She loves colorful things and tie dye things and she even likes to bake! And she has a sweet tooth!

So, of course, I had to go for a round two on the cake!
I knew right away I was going to make her a wonderful colorful striped cake. And I wanted to direct her to this blog so that she can see that I’m a cake decorator and not just some random crazy internet person who could be sending her some poisoned food lol.

I knew right away I wanted to pick some wild colors. I went with blue, green, pink and orange. So much fun!!!

Some photos of the layering. I used the zebra cake technique. Two table spoons of each color alternating in the center…

I apologize for the sorry state of these photos. My phone cameras are pretty messed up right now and I plan on replacing them :p

Home made buttercream… sooo yummy!

Home made fondant. I wore rubber gloves to protect my lovely Star Trek manicure… but that’s a whole other story…

Filled and covered with the delicious buttercream!

All done!

Packaged up to be shipped off to my lovely giftee!!!

I sent this off with a box packed full of some other things I made just for her and a few other trinkets. I hope she loves everything!

So, this guy, Tony… he’s awesome. He turned 40 this year and put together a super cool fling for himself.
I was to do the cake and I knew I needed to make something very cool for this very cool guy.

I think I delivered. His party was on the roof top of a very cool building downtown with a great view!

Hey! I can see my apartment from here!

I covered the cake board with a fancy placemat and decided this cake needed to be TWO cakes haha.
I brainstormed and came up with some ideas. I mean what do you make a super hip guy with tons of interests?!
I settled on a few things. I made a plank of sushi for the large cake which was strawberry flavored.
Then I made a saucer and a mug of coffee which was chocolate espresso flavored cake! And a little fondant cassette tape.

Okay, so sometimes you get to make a cake and you know it’s going to be one of the coolest thing ever before you even start rolling out the fondant…

Hands down one of the coolest things I’ve had the privilege of making.
Challenge #1 was that this was a glutton free cake. I’ve not made one, so I hope it tasted good. I was told it was good :)
Again, I’m hella behind on posting, so I made this a while back.

Anyhow this birthday cake was for Joel Robinson of artpusher.net. He seems to be a very rad dude and I feel lucky to have been able to make this cake!

First I had to recreate his logo in sugar. I’ll tell you, his website at the time didn’t have the full logo, so I kind of had to make it up in photo shop haha.

I filled the cake with a blood red strawberry reduction I made. (I could have just eaten it all with a spoon it was so good. I made the cake black velvet.

The bones I made with candy melt. I made and cooled tons and lined the entire cake with them. Black chocolate fondant covered the cake.

The skulls were from a mold and the knife I hand made a mold for using one of my kitchen knives. I hand painted that.

His wife asked for a horror themed cake! I think I delivered!
Seriously, one of the coolest cakes I’ve ever done!

My niece Sophia is pretty much the cutest thing ever. Posting this now makes me feel really silly because of how long ago this party was, but hey, I’m hopping back on the posting wagon! I have a whole back log of cakes to post!

I knew I wanted to do a yummy pink strawberries and cream zebra cake!

That turned out awesome. I put strawberry jello mix in the batter haha

Okay, first and foremost… I’M SORRY. I know, I’m pretty terrible about this whole blogging thing. I’m awful, I know. I promise I still love each and every one of you and I appreciate your interest in my life and cakes. So THANK YOU. Seriously. I love you guys.

That said, I made this cake a while back and it’s one of my favorite I’ve ever done. It turned out so great. I mean, the theme is bikes! I love bikes!

I got this super cool mold:

I was so excited to use it!

The rainbow cakes for this thing were AWESOME. Some of my favorite to date:

It was a topsy turvy cake. I love them because they look all wonky like they’re going to fall but in reality, they’re totally level :D

The bikes turned out really great!

The whole thing was just really lovely!

Seriously, one of my all time favorites! More posts to come! I pinky swear!

Like this:

First of all, I apologize for the lack of posts. With everything going on in my life, sometimes I just can’t find the time. I was able to make a lovely wedding cake for two friends this year and it was quite an amazing challenge!

We started with the wedding colors and a sketch.

I wanted to do something different with this cake. I wanted to cover it in chocolate ganache rather than buttercream before I put on the fondant.
There was so.much.chocolate involved in this process.

There was a lot of baking involved…

Followed by lots of fillings and lots of ganache!

I had no sooner gotten all the cakes covered in ganache when my phone rang. Disaster. My husband had been hit by a car. He works at a bike shop and was testing a customer’s bike in the parking lot when a driver, who wasn’t looking ahead of their vehicle ran into him.
I rushed to the hospital. Cake be damned.

Thankfully, things were better than they looked. Nothing broken, just some scrapes and bruises. I brought him home and got back to work.

Fondant was next. I had made tons of it. I forget how much, it was either 8 or 10 pounds.

I made all of the dots for the cake from gum paste.

Once each cake was covered, I made a test stack.
That went pretty well.

The dots were added and I called it a night.

The next day I loaded the cake into my car. I had no assistance as Brian was injured. I stacked the bottom two tiers and placed the top two in boxes.
I set the stacked two tiers on the back seat and the top two tiers on the floor of the vehicle.
I got moving and was nearing the venue. There was some construction. At some point, the guy in front of me slammed on his brakes. I had no choice and no where to go.

I felt the two bottom tiers hit the back of my seat.

I’ll give you a moment to process that.

I pulled over and examined the damage. Wow. The cakes had fallen off the seat and were sideways.
I have NEVER EVER been in a situation like that before. I was having a full on panic attack. I picked the cakes up and tried to sort of press them back into shape with my hands. (Let me also say it was about 95 degrees F out…)
I texted my friend who was performing the ceremony and basically told him what happened and to talk me out of driving off a bridge to save myself the humiliation. He told me to just get there and we’d take care of it.

This ended up being the back of the cake.
I had brought icing to do some border work and guess what?!
I didn’t have enough. On top of everything. At this point the bartender made me a drink to calm my nerves. I mean, hey, the front of the cake looked fine, I was surrounded by friends and I KNEW the cake would taste good.
My friends walked down the isle cute as could be.

Do you want to know the sad part? After everything? I never even got a good photo of the cake.

It just seemed like there were forces working against me the entire time I was working on this cake, but dammit, I got it done and once it was cut and I’d had a few rum and cokes in me, I was feeling much better about the entire thing.
Everyone said it tasted great. Thank god. haha. At least I could count on that!

My friend’s son needs to stop growing up. It’s making me feel pretty old. Every time he has a birthday I start to panic that it’s impossible another year has passed!!

Addison is five this year. I’m still not sure I believe it.
He had a pirate theme party and it was pretty darn adorable. His mom put a lot of work into getting a lot of fun pirate stuff together for him!

I did this giant pirate ship cake with pretzel stick railings and Hand distressed sails! The whole thing was chocolate!

I bet next week she’ll be telling me he’s about to turn six! I think I’ll faint.